This is a personal website. Here is what happens to your data when you visit it, in plain words.
Who is responsible
Alessandro Matera is responsible for this website and for the data handled on it (the data controller). You can write to me at me@alessandromatera.com.
Visits
Like any website, the server that hosts it (Hostinger) keeps technical logs: IP address, browser, pages requested, date and time. They are used to keep the site running and secure, and are kept for a limited time by the hosting provider.
There is no advertising. Fonts are loaded from this server, not from Google, and the pages make no requests to other sites.
The share buttons are plain links: Facebook, LinkedIn and the other sites are contacted only if you click them.
Statistics
To know how many people read the site, what they read and where they come from, I use a statistics system that I wrote myself and that runs on this server. It sets no cookies, stores nothing on your device and sends no data to anyone else.
When you open a page, the site updates some totals: the page, the site or app you came from (for example Facebook or LinkedIn), any campaign parameters in the link (utm), your country, the type of device (phone, tablet or computer, also worked out from the screen size), the browser, the operating system, the browser language and the time of day. On articles it also counts how long you stay active on the page and how far you read. If you click a link to another site, it records only the destination address. If you use the buttons to share an article, it counts which one you used.
The country is worked out from your IP address with a database that lives on this server (IP Geolocation by DB-IP). To count each visitor only once a day, the site computes an anonymous code from your IP address, your browser and a key that changes every day. The code and the key are deleted every day and your IP address is never stored: I cannot know who you are, nor recognise you the next day.
What remains are only totals (how many visits, which pages, which countries and so on), which contain no personal data. I don’t share them with anyone.
The legal basis is my legitimate interest in understanding what gets read and how to improve the site, without tracking who reads it.
Comments
If you leave a comment, the site stores your name, your email address, the text of the comment, your IP address and your browser’s user agent. Your email is never published. IP and user agent help to spot spam.
Comments are checked by Antispam Bee, which runs on this server and does not send your data to external services. The first comment of each person waits for my approval before it appears.
Comments stay on the site until they are deleted. If you want one of yours removed, write to me. The legal basis is your consent when you send a comment, and my legitimate interest in keeping the site free of spam.
Newsletter
If you leave your email in the box at the bottom of the pages, the site stores your address, the language of the page (English or Italian), the page you signed up from, and the date and time you signed up and confirmed.
Right after, you get an email with a link to confirm. Until you click it you get nothing else, and if you don’t confirm within seven days the address is deleted.
I use your address only to send you an email when I publish a new article: its beginning and a link to read the rest. The emails go out from my mailbox at Hostinger, the same provider that hosts the site, and your address is not given to anyone else.
Every email has a link to unsubscribe with one click. When you unsubscribe, your address is deleted.
Each email contains a tiny image, and its links go through this site, so I can count how many times that email was opened and how many clicks it got. These are only totals for each email: there is no code that identifies you, so I can’t know who opened it or who clicked. When your mail app shows the image, it downloads it from this server, like when you visit a page, and the technical logs described above apply.
The legal basis is your consent, which you give by confirming and can withdraw at any time by unsubscribing.
Cookies
The site uses only technical cookies:
pll_languageremembers whether you are reading in English or Italian, for one year.- If you tick the box under the comment form, three cookies remember your name and email for your next comment, for one year.
- If you log in (that is only me), WordPress uses its login cookies.
Embedded content
If an article embeds content from another site, such as a video, that site may collect data about you as if you had visited it directly.
Your rights
Under the GDPR you can ask to access, correct or delete your data, to restrict or object to its use, and to receive it in a portable format. Just write to me@alessandromatera.com. You can also lodge a complaint with the Italian data protection authority, the Garante per la protezione dei dati personali.
Last updated: October 2026.